


Into the Water

by paramountie



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dreams and Nightmares, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, POV Alternating, Period-Typical Homophobia, The Ritual of Chüd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:22:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28517106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paramountie/pseuds/paramountie
Summary: "Facing our fears? What are we supposed to be afraid of here?”It takes Eddie a little while to answer. He keeps opening and closing his mouth.“I think we’ll find out as we go,” he says.-The Ritual of Chüd, remix.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 13
Kudos: 124





	Into the Water

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Internalized homophobia, regular homophobia, discussion & description of Adrian Mellon's murder, and extensive description of Eddie's anxieties about illness/contagion which might be especially stressful in These Trying Times. (Richie Tozier does NOT social distance properly.) and, of course, Sonia Kaspbrak’s A+ parenting. 
> 
> Thank you to pavonem for the beta & for teaching me how hyphens work.

The alarm next to Richie’s bed has gone off five times, and each time Richie hits snooze. His bed is warm, and his pillow is soft, and his husband’s hair might be sticking into his mouth but it smells good, like shampoo, soft and flowery. If he could, he’d lie here forever, half-asleep, thoughts slipping into dreams like cream into a cup of coffee. He doesn’t need to wake up.

“If you don’t turn that alarm off,” Eddie growls, face buried in Richie’s shoulder, “I’m going to kill you.”

“Well, that’d be a bad idea,” Richie says, “I didn’t leave you anything in my will.”

Still, Richie smacks the alarm until it’s quiet and tugs Eddie closer. Where did he have to go anyway? The memory is out of reach, soupy and unclear. He opens his eyes, and for a second he’s disoriented. Is this his room? His soft sheets, his rickety bedside table? The view out of his window is strange, suddenly, familiar and unfamiliar. There’s a telephone wire, cutting its way across the glass, and off in the distance, there are fuzzy green pine trees. For some reason, Richie expects to see something else.

When he sits up, the dizziness in his thoughts eases. He knows this place. Those are his battered sneakers tumbling out of the closet. There’s the ugly painting on the wall that Eddie picked out to “class up the place.” It’s a splotchy brown and yellow thing, like an off-brand Monet, and when Richie wants to rile Eddie up he says it looks like what’s left in the shower drain after his mom gets out.

“The least you can do is make me breakfast,” Eddie says, curling deeper into the blanket. His dark hair is mussed, and his face is puffy, making him look young, like he shed ten years overnight. Richie kisses his cheek.

“What do you want?” he asks. “Eggs or eggs?”

“French toast.”

“We ran out of bread last night.”

“Waffles.”

“I’ll go out real quick and get a waffle maker.” Richie says. He starts disentangling himself from Eddie (who, for all his talk of wanting breakfast, is hanging, leech-like, onto Richie’s arm). “And waffle mix. And milk.”

“Why don’t you ever shop?”

“Nag, nag, nag.”

Richie’s feet hit cold floor, and he pulls on a sweatshirt from the top of the hamper.

In the beginning of their relationship, Eddie cooked, but all he’d make was steamed tofu, brown rice, vegetables without flavor and smoothies without joy. They’d sit at the table in their tiny, shitty old apartment and pick at their plates. Eventually, Richie had to teach himself to cook to keep them both from starving.

It helps that Eddie has simple tastes, like a little kid. He doesn’t like spices or oils or anything French. Instead, he prefers butter and salt and sugar, all the stuff that he insists is bad for him. As long as Richie’s cooking, he’ll eat junk just fine. Happily, even. There’s no way to _prove_ the food isn’t sugar-free, dairy-free, gluten-free, so he might as well eat it. You don’t want to be wasteful, do you Richie?

So Richie makes a plate of fluffy scrambled eggs and heads back to the bedroom. The things he does for love.

Eddie’s up, staring out the window. He’s wearing one of Richie’s ratty college shirts. It’s long on him. The big shirt combined with the tall window makes him look tiny, like he’s a bug on the glass or a finger smudge.

“I think I have a brain tumor,” Eddie says.

Richie slips his arms around Eddie’s waist.

“You think that every morning.”

“I don’t remember going to sleep last night.” He turns around in Richie’s arms. His face is pale, suddenly, and his eyes too wide.

Richie knows all of Eddie’s ailments, and memory loss _is_ a new one. It’s always _headache, back twinge, weird pimple, ugly mole_. His memory’s fine. Too good, probably. He’s constantly bringing up illnesses he read about, heard about, saw on Dr. Oz.

“Give yourself a minute. It’s early.”

“I don’t remember _anything_ I did yesterday.”

“Who does?”

“Richie.” Eddie’s fingers tighten around Richie’s biceps, but Richie’s dealt with this anxiety for ages. Most days, he can defuse it, quickly and efficiently, like a bomb squad with a decade under their belts. Still, for some reason, this is making him nervous.

Does _Richie_ remember what they did yesterday? Got up, went to work, sure, but what are the details? Was it sunny or rainy? Was there traffic on the highway? What TV show did they watch when they got home?

“Sweetheart,” Richie says. Push through it, always push through it. “You’re thinking too hard. Relax, it’ll come to you.”

“Richie,” Eddie says. And he sounds sad now, grief-stricken. “You’re not my husband.”

And there it is. Wrong wire clipped, bomb goes off.

Somehow, Richie knows Eddie’s telling the truth.

* * *

They’re sitting on the Kissing Bridge, legs dangling out over the edge and arms resting on the railing. It’s been five whole minutes since Richie’s said anything, which, while heavenly, is making Eddie think Richie might’ve either gotten brain damage or fallen asleep. Of course, Eddie knows from years of sleepovers that a lack of consciousness doesn’t prevent Richie from talking.

One night, they were huddled on Bill’s living room floor, sharing a sleeping bag because Richie forgot his (which was typical Richie. Showing up late with nothing but two comic books and a trashy magazine. Not even a toothpaste or, goddamn it, deodorant. And Eddie’s forced to rescue him because he’s a _good person_ , even though Richie’s not homeless or actually needy at all, he’s just an idiot.) Everyone else had fallen asleep, but Richie kept Eddie up. _Hey Eddie, play cards with me. Hey Eddie, if we turn down the volume on the TV no one will notice. Hey Eddie, don’t fall asleep yet, you’re such a pussy._ Then Richie had passed out, quick like a baby on a car trip, while Eddie sat there, too irritated to be tired.

His eyes were finally starting to droop when he heard Richie muttering. Eddie thought he’d woken up until he realized Richie was making even less sense than usual. So Eddie started listening, waiting for blackmail material.

Unfortunately, Richie’s dreams seemed mostly mundane. He spent ten minutes explaining to their science teacher why he hadn’t done the homework, and then another fifteen telling their gym teacher that his ankle really was sprained, even if it didn’t look it. The way Richie acted during the day, Eddie assumed his dreams would be crazy, bombastic explosions. But it seemed like sleep was the only time Richie really relaxed. Maybe because he wasn’t trying to impress anyone.

Eventually, despite Richie’s muttering, Eddie began to drift off. He was half-asleep when he heard it.

“Eddie,” Richie said. When Eddie opened his eyes, Richie had this soft smile on his face. He didn’t say anything else after that, and Eddie drifted off wondering what it meant, what he’d dreamt about, why he’d looked so happy. The next morning, Richie said he never remembered his dreams, so Eddie forgot about it. Mostly.

Now, Richie’s quiet and Eddie is genuinely worried he might be dead.

“Hey,” Eddie says, elbowing him in the side. “What are you thinking about?”

Richie looks over at him and then back down at the water. It’s a clogged green color, moving sluggish below them.

“Did you hear about that kid who died here?” Richie asks.

“Which one?” There haven’t been many deaths at the Kissing Bridge, but there have been some. Each one is carefully noted and catalogued in Eddie’s mind, arranged in order of Likelihood They’ll Happen To Him. There’s the toddler who slipped through the railings a few years back (They’ve added new safety features since then, and Eddie isn’t small enough to go through the railings by accident, no matter what Richie might imply.) and the drunk guy whose friends dared him to leap off (Eddie has not, does not, will not ever consume alcohol.) There were some deaths when the bridge collapsed in the 1800s, and a couple car accidents since. (These types of things could kill Eddie, but the worry is distant, a small buzz in the back of his mind. There’s plenty of stuff in the world that could kill him quicker.)

“The recent one,” Richie says, “The one in the news.”

Now, Eddie remembers seeing the headlines on the front of his mom’s paper. _Murder at the Kissing Bridge_ and a man’s face, swollen with river water and blood. Not exactly a kid, but young, closer to their age than their parents’.

“I didn’t read about it.”

“It freaked me out,” Richie admits. He goes quiet again.

What the fuck could have happened to that guy? Did he get eaten by wolves? Richie laughs at horror movies, pokes roadkill with sticks, talks about gore and vomit while eating lunch. Sometimes, Eddie wishes Richie would be a bit more afraid, once in a while. Maybe then he’d live past twenty.

“He get disemboweled or something?”

“No,” Richie rests his chin on his arms, expression pinched. “He was walking here with his… with one of his friends and some guys beat him up.”

“Why?” Eddie asks. He doesn’t want to know, and if he were smarter he wouldn’t ask. Tonight he’ll have nightmares, and tomorrow he’ll develop a pathological fear of bridges, but right now, he can’t stop himself from asking. It’s like the murder is a road map for the rest of Eddie’s life. Here’s what the dead kid did wrong. Here’s what Eddie will do right.

“Do psycho murderers need a reason?”

“You mean it was random?”

“No,” Richie says. He looks a little less scared now, a little more irritated.

“What did the paper say?”

“I don’t know. Read it yourself,” Richie snaps. He’s never really snapped at Eddie before so Eddie says _okay_ and lets the matter rest.

Now, Eddie remembers his mom looking at the front page, lip twisting. _Good riddance_ , she’d said. At the time, Eddie hadn’t thought about it, but now he wonders what a person could do to make his mother look at them like that. Take in their mutilated features and think they deserved it.

“I hate this shitty town,” Richie says. “I can’t wait to get out of here.”

“Where would you go?”

“I don’t know. Someplace interesting. Tokyo. The moon.”

“They’d never let you into NASA.”

“They would, I get good grades,” Richie says. He grins, big and loose, like his bad mood never happened. “And astronauts need someone funny to keep them entertained on long space trips.”

“If they need someone funny, they definitely won’t accept you.”

Richie laughs and throws himself onto his back, not seeming to care about the millions of dirty feet that have stomped on the spot where his head is.

“You want to live on the moon with me?” Richie asks. “I could sneak you into my luggage.”

“Are people even going to the moon anymore?”

“I don’t know,” Richie says and wrinkles his nose. Eddie thinks _cute_ and is promptly disgusted with himself. “What year is it?”

“What do you mean what year is it?”

“I mean, what year is it? I can’t remember.”

“Did you get hit on the head or something?”

Richie reaches up under his glasses and rubs his eyes. Eddie starts coming up with first aid questions. What day is it? Who’s the president?

“I don’t think so,” Richie says, and when he pulls his hands away from his face, his forehead is puckered. “How did we get here?”

“Richie,” Eddie says, because he doesn’t know where else to start. He needs to check Richie’s pupils, see if he can stand on his own. Ask him what his last name is, how many fingers Eddie’s holding up.

 _Tozier. Three._ Eddie knows the answers. He does.

He reaches for his inhaler.

What year is it? What day is it? Who’s the president? Eddie knows this too. As soon as his mind stops swirling, he’ll remember the answers.

“How old are we?” Richie asks, and Eddie’s ready to respond right away. He’s thirteen. Almost fourteen.

 _Forty_ , another part of him says. _Twenty-five, sixteen. Thirteen, thirteen, thirteen._

“I don’t know,” he says, panic pressing thick fingers into his lungs, “Richie-“ he remembers his thirtieth birthday, blue candle wax pooling on top of the cake. He remembers Richie kissing his cheek with a smack, Myra across the room, icing in hand. He remembers his fifth birthday, unwrapping a teddy bear in a neat little doctor’s outfit. He remembers his eightieth birthday, Richie asleep next to him, Myra’s back against his chest. He remembers dying. He remembers the moment before he was born. The cool, murky silence.

“Richie,” he says again, and Richie stares at him. Underneath the terror, his face is sweet, soft, and so, so young.

They’ve never met before. They’ve known each other their whole lives.

* * *

Richie’s on the couch. His couch, in his apartment. Because he’s a grown man, not a knobby-kneed teenager. Jesus Christ, whatever kind of nightmare world they’re in isn’t pulling its punches. Making him relive puberty is just cruel.

There’s something cold and wet on his forehead, and when he touches it he realizes it’s one of their dish towels, soaked in icy water. He feels the edges of rough embroidery and knows it’s the tacky one he bought for their first apartment, back when they were still living paycheck to paycheck. It’s covered in pictures of kittens playing with yarn balls. The moment he saw it he knew the sheer hideousness would make Eddie laugh.

How come he remembers that and not what day of the week it is?

“You put a compress on me?” he asks. From somewhere to his left, Eddie answers:

“It seemed the thing to do.”

He sounds calm. Some nasty part of Richie wishes that he were hyperventilating.

The pressure on his head disappears, and the washcloth is replaced by Eddie’s cool fingers, brushing back Richie’s hair.

“Feel better?” Eddie says.

“No,” Richie replies.

“What’s the last thing you remember? The last real thing.”

For some reason, the question offends Richie and he sits up, dislodging Eddie’s hand. He remembers a lot of things. Their tiny courthouse wedding, arranged on a whim because Eddie didn’t want to invite family and the thought of wedding-planning made Richie ready to hurl. Their first date. They hadn’t wanted to admit it was a date, so they’d both brought a friend along and the two sat between them. Richie spent so much mental energy not looking at Eddie that he missed most of the plot and had to improvise during their conversation about it afterwards. _Yeah, she was hot. Yeah, the CGI was terrible. Yeah, I think the giant squid represented American consumerism._ And he remembers their first kiss, at a pizzeria a week later, how Eddie tasted like garlic and Richie was kind of grossed out but mostly into it. All of this is so clear, so precise. The memories come easily to him.

Some part of him knows that they come too easily, like they’re part of a story he’s making up. If he peels past them, there are different memories underneath. They feel uglier, nastier. He supposes that means they’re real.

“I remember getting a call from Mike,” he says, rubbing away the headache that’s gathering in his temples, “And then heading to Derry. Going to the sewers, I think.”

They’re not married in that life.

“How did we get here?” Eddie asks, but Richie’s thoughts are too jumbled for him to answer. Everything’s out of order in his head. Did they go to Neibolt, or is he thinking of that summer all those years ago?

“Is… is _it_ doing this?” Richie asks. “Do you think it got to us?”

“Wouldn’t there be more, I don’t know, gore? Blood, maggots, vomit?”

“Fire, brimstone.”

“Shit-ton of clowns.”

Richie doesn’t think It’s doing this. The clown wouldn’t be so nice. Giving them a lazy summer afternoon, a morning in bed. This is the type of stuff Richie would dream up, not a demented alien monster hellbent on killing them.

Maybe it’s torture for Eddie. Richie doesn’t want to ask.

“Does it matter how we got here?” he asks. “How do we wake up?”

“I tried pinching my arm,” Eddie says, pacing, “Maybe if we die?”

“Let’s try that last.”

“Good idea.”

Eddie moves to sit on the couch, and Richie pulls his legs back. Some part of him, some still-active husband instinct, wants to put his feet on Eddie’s lap, cuddle in close, but that doesn’t make sense anymore. They’re not married. They’re barely even friends.

Still, Eddie leans against his knees slightly, unconsciously, and Richie feels grounded for the first time since he woke up. If you can call it waking up.

“I hope that fucking clown isn’t eating us right now,” Eddie says. Richie laughs.

“God, if the clown’s this nice to all its victims, I’d let it eat me.”

Inexplicably, those words seem to make Eddie calm. Or at least, his foot stops tapping and his fingers (which had been digging into the couch cushion) loosen.

“Things could be a lot worse,” he says, and it sounds almost like a question.

“Yeah,” Richie replies. “Much worse.”

* * *

They’re on the Kissing Bridge again, but they’re older. Eddie can tell because the world looks smaller, now. The water underneath them doesn’t seem so far away. It’s night, but there are bright lights in the distance, technicolor and moving fast. A Ferris wheel carves through the dark sky. He smells popcorn, zeppoles, an undercurrent of puke.

Richie’s got an arm across Eddie’s shoulders and he’s chattering about something. He hasn’t realized that they’re still in the dream. There’s always that moment of disorientation when they switch scenes. Each time, they fall for it all over again.

Being held like this feels strange. Eddie has about a hundred overlapping, contradictory memories playing in his head. Richie’s arm tucked across him as they fall asleep. Myra’s hand hooked around his elbow. He feels like he’s never been this close to someone, and he feels like he’s always been here, pressed against Richie’s side.

“One of these days, I’m gonna get you on a roller coaster,” Richie says.

“No, because I value my life.”

“You gotta take risks, babe,” Richie says, squeezing his shoulders. “Once in a while, put your life in God’s hands.”

“What kind of advice is that?”

They’re by the railing now and Eddie turns towards Richie, body fitting neatly in the circle of his arms.

“Good advice,” Richie says, but he’s not paying attention to his own words. Instead, he’s leaning in, the tip of his nose brushing Eddie’s cheek. Despite the racket in his head (this isn’t his life, this isn’t his life), Eddie tilts his head forward, eyes on Richie’s mouth.

There’s a rustle behind them. Footsteps.

Richie’s hand hits his chest.

“Don’t kiss me,” he says, “Please don’t kiss me.”

* * *

Eddie’s probably asleep. Richie’s been watching him intently for several minutes, and sometimes his cheek will twitch or his eyes will shift under his eyelids, but other than that, he’s immobile. Breathing slow and deep, body lax.

Richie wants to touch him. He has never wanted anything so badly. It doesn’t help that he remembers a lifetime full of touching Eddie. Kissing his temple and biting his ear, pinching his waist and holding his elbow. Falling asleep with Eddie’s head on his chest and waking up with his head on Eddie’s.

He’s spent the last hour putting his memories in order. Separating the real from the unreal, like filtering dirt out of water.

His marriage? Not real. Growing up in Derry, being terrorized by a killer clown? Real. And that’s just Richie’s luck, isn’t it? All the nice, normal stuff is fake as shit. He’s not allowed to have a husband, a nine-to-five, a two-bedroom apartment. All he gets is the childhood spent looking for severed heads in the sewers.

Eddie huffs a little and presses his face into the pillow. Even in his sleep, he’s got a worried crease between his eyebrows, like he’s dreaming about taxes and grocery lists.

Would it be wrong to touch him? To curl his hand around Eddie’s neck? Is it wrong that Richie wants to? His wretched, traitorous fingers keep twitching.

“Richie,” Eddie says, eyes still closed.

Richie knows how Eddie’s husband would respond to this. He’d lean in close, kiss Eddie’s mouth, cheek, Adam’s apple, until Eddie scrunched up his nose and pouted to hide his grin. _Morning, sunshine_ , Richie would say, a little bit too loud, voice brighter than his mood. They’re not morning people, but Eddie says sleeping in makes him depressed, so Richie’s gotten good at waking him, putting on his Overly Caffeinated Weatherman Voice and yapping about wind patterns until Eddie has to get up so he can smother Richie with his pillow.

That’s what Eddie’s husband would do. Richie has no idea what the hell _he’s_ supposed to do.

“Yeah?” he says.

“I think I figured it out,” he pauses, rearranging the pillow under his head, and goes quiet. Richie gives him a minute before snapping his fingers next to Eddie’s ear.

“Hey, asshole, don’t leave me hanging.” Eddie opens his eyes and gives Richie a dark look. “Oh, come on. You can’t be tired in a dream.”

“Then how come I _am_ tired?”

“Because you’re a lazy ass,” Richie says, and that gets Eddie to sit up. His hair’s mushed flat on his head, and his face is squishy and sleepy. Right now, Eddie’s husband would have no choice but to kiss him. The love would swell up in him fast and strong like an airbag in a car accident.

“It’s the ritual,” Eddie says around a yawn, “The one Mike told us about.”

It takes a second for Richie to sort through his fake Mike memories (Mike dancing at his wedding, Mike catching a football, Mike, tipsy the night before graduation and kissing everyone’s cheeks) and get to the real ones.

“The ritual of Chüd,” Richie says, recalling the words only as they leave his mouth. “To kill the clown.”

“He said we’d have to face our fears.”

“ _This_ is facing our fears? What the fuck are we supposed to be afraid of here?”

It takes Eddie a little while to answer. He keeps opening and closing his mouth.

“I think we’ll find out as we go,” he says.

“Maybe we’re afraid of commitment.”

“Speak for yourself,” Eddie snaps, “I’m married in real life.”

Don’t remind me, Richie almost says. He bites it back at the last second.

What would Eddie’s wife be doing right now? What does she do when he’s scared or when he’s sick? When he’s being a brat in the mornings or an angel in the afternoons? Is she better to him than Richie would be?

“Why are we married to each other?” Eddie asks. “Why not one of the other Losers like Bev? Or Bill?”

“Listen, we all want to marry Bill. There‘s not enough of him to go around.”

Richie knows the answer, of course. There’s no way in hell he’d ever say it out loud, but he knows it. He’s married to Eddie because nothing in the world scares him more. He’s married to Eddie because being this close to Eddie makes him freak out, makes him stupid. If it were any of the other guys, he’d crack some jokes and move on. They’d be out of this vision in ten minutes because he doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter how many times the dream would make him kiss Bev or cuddle Bill or wrap himself in Ben’s big, strong arms. He’d get over it and wake up.

But he can’t force himself away from Eddie like that. He doesn’t want to.

* * *

They’ve been playing cards for somewhere between ten minutes and a hundred years. Both of them are on the floor of the clubhouse, and Eddie can tell it isn’t real because the dirt under his legs feels cool and smooth, instead of rough and buggy. If he were awake, he’d be flicking ants off his ankles.

“Man, I don’t miss being thirteen.” Richie’s stretched out on his stomach and his face, acne-covered and angular, is propped on his palm.

“I do,” Eddie says.

“Seriously?”

“Come on, thirteen-year-olds have it made. They don’t have to worry about money or coronary disease.”

“You used to worry about coronary disease all the time.”

“Well, I didn’t _have_ to.” Even though he knows Richie’s right, when he thinks about middle school, he doesn’t remember being anxious. He knows he worried a lot, and his memories of his mother are mostly dark and dreary, but that’s not what sticks out. He remembers riding his bike down the hill on Main Street, the clean feeling of wind on his skin. Playing baseball and video games and running without ever needing to catch his breath. “I’d go back. Really go back. Not in a dream, or whatever this shit is.”

“You couldn’t pay me.” Richie slaps an ace onto the dirt and Eddie hands over his card without bothering to look at it. “Although I guess that’s why people have kids. To relive childhood.”

“Yeah, only the kids get to do all the fun stuff while the adults change the diapers.”

“You don’t want kids?”

“Are you kidding me? The moment you have a kid you can count on being sick for the next eighteen years.” Eddie fidgets with his cards, restless. “Can we play Spit or something?”

If Richie were actually his thirteen-year-old self, the mention of the word “spit” would have him hacking up phlegm and chasing Eddie around the room. Instead, the adult Richie hands over his deck, placid. There’s something new about him, something calm and still.

“I always pictured you as a dad,” Richie says, “You’re like the textbook version of a helicopter parent.”

“Thanks.”

“You’d be one of those dads who signs their kid up for violin and seduces the Harvard admissions counselor.”

“I would not.”

“In a tight polo shirt.”

Eddie kicks Richie, hard, right in the knee. Richie only laughs, because at this age he has the pain tolerance of a pit bull.

“That’s why I’m never having kids,” Eddie says, “I’d be just like my mom.”

The words surprise him. He and Myra tried a couple times, but when the tests kept coming back negative, he couldn’t muster up any disappointment. And with Richie, in his fake life, it always seemed too complicated. Adoption or surrogacy or whatever people were doing. It was too much effort, and they never got around to it. And in both lives, the more time passed without kids, the more relieved he was. He thought it was because he’d avoided 18 years of spit-up on his shirt and food stains on the couch, but now he knows. It’s one more way his life won’t be like his mother’s.

Richie’s eyebrows furrow, and Eddie has the strangest feeling that Richie already knows all of it, everything Eddie’s feeling right now, all the steps his thoughts went through and the place where they landed. He doesn’t like seeing that serious look on Richie’s face, a mix of innocence and age.

“You could never be your mom,” Richie says, and he actually lets the words sit there for a weighty moment before he adds: “Someone that hot only comes along once in a lifetime.”

“Shut up,” Eddie says, giving up on shuffling in favor of tossing the cards at Richie’s head.

“Your body could never compare, Eds.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“And that ass?”

Eddie jumps him. Even at this age, Richie has the size advantage, but there’s not much he can do when Eddie hurls himself at him full force. His head hits the ground with a thunk and his glasses go flying, but he’s giggling like he doesn’t feel a thing. Eddie perches on his chest, legs crossed.

“Sorry, sorry,” Richie says, when he finally catches his breath, “Your ass is fine, I shouldn’t have insulted the ass.”

“Thank you,” Eddie says, and readjusts his feet so they’re not digging into Richie’s lungs.

“And you’re wrong.”

“About what?”

“About being like your mom,” he says. Eddie braces for another joke, but Richie’s looking serious again. His eyes are boring into Eddie’s, like he can make Eddie believe him if he stares hard enough and with an earnest enough expression.

“I already am,” he says and slides off of Richie, landing on the dirt with his head somewhere by Richie’s feet. “I talk like her. I walk like her. I even drive like her. The first time I got in a car it was like her ghost possessed me. Some guy cut me off and I wanted to kill him, like actually murder him, and I swear her voice came out of my mouth. I dress like her. I organize my medicine cabinet like her. I’m _her_ all the way through.”

“You’re different, okay, trust me,” Richie says, and Eddie’s glad that he can’t see his expression. The dewy blue eyes, the stubborn set to his mouth. Just hearing the solemnity in his tone is bad enough. “I know you, and I knew her. I’ve never seen two people more different.”

“How? How are we different?”

“Because you give a shit, Eds. You care about people. You’re sweet, and you have a good sense of humor, and people like being around you, even when you lecture them about taking their vitamin C,” Richie’s voice has gotten intense, too loud for the small space, and he punctuates his words by smacking Eddie’s knee. Lightly, but each touch sends a shock through him, like the buzz in his bones after a firework goes off. “You’re a good friend, and you’d be a great dad, and you know what? That kid would never get sick because you’d drown them in hand sanitizer, but it would be for the best because you give a shit, okay?”

Eddie can’t respond to any of that, so they both lie there, staring at the cobwebs criss-crossing the ceiling.

* * *

How come all churches smell the same? Richie’s spent a fair amount of time in various churches, always unwillingly, and the moment he walks in the smell hits him: Christianity. Christianity smells waxy and a little dusty. Christianity smells like holy water in metal bowls.

Richie hadn’t wanted to have the funeral in a church, but the Kaspbraks outvoted him. And he hadn’t exactly been in the right mindset to argue with a gaggle of grieving aunts and uncles.

Or at least, they say they’re grieving. They don’t seem sad. Every time he talks to them, they get this strange, smug look on their faces. A pinched lips, raised eyebrows sort of look. _It was inevitable,_ their tight mouths say, _It’s a miracle he lived as long as he did._

Now, one of those uncles is giving the eulogy. He looks like Eddie, same height, same build, same slightly crazed brown eyes. They all look like him. If Richie squints, he can pretend he’s in a room full of Eddies. If he covers his ears, he can hear Eddie’s voice coming from thirty places at once.

As an afterthought, they’d asked him if he wanted to give the eulogy, and Richie had laughed, high and shrill. So one of the uncles stepped up, and he’s spent the last five minutes talking about Eddie toddling around in diapers and eating dirt, because that’s the last time any of these people saw Eddie. Decades ago. They all find the dirt-eating funny, but it makes Richie sad. What happened to the kid who wasn’t afraid of anything? What did these people do to him?

Richie distracts himself by flicking through the hymnal. If he reads fast enough, he can stop crying for a few seconds. It’s a good strategy, keeps him from getting dehydrated. And it keeps him from leaping to his feet and shouting out his own eulogy, the one he’s been writing in his head since the moment Eddie died.

His eulogy wouldn’t be about childhood and dirt-eating. He wouldn’t tell stories about Eddie cleaning his cuts when they were ten years old, or jumping into the quarry when they were thirteen. His eulogy wouldn’t be nice.

 _You killed him,_ Richie would say because they did. Every single Kaspbrak, from the children to the grandparents. They killed him because they didn’t stop his mother from raising him. Because when they found out about him and Richie they stopped calling, stopped sending Christmas cards, and pretended not to recognize Eddie when they saw him at the grocery store. Because if they’d been there, the night Eddie died, they wouldn’t have come running or called the cops. They would have watched as Eddie was killed, and they would have slid their deadbolts shut. They would have gone back to sleep.

He’s dead because of them.

It’s not fair to think so. Richie’s hands tremble and the thin pages of the hymnal shred in his fingers. It’s not fair to think so, really it isn’t, because they weren’t there.

Richie was there.

 _He’s dead because of me,_ Richie would say, and that’s fair, that’s right, that’s the truth at the bottom of everything. It rises in Richie’s body like mud dredged up from the bottom of a river. _It’s my fault. I killed him._

* * *

The thing is, Eddie’s not only a hypochondriac. He’s terrified of getting sick, yes, but that’s not where the fear ends. The deeper fear, the more persistent one, seems to be making other people sick. Becoming a contagion. It probably stems from watching the story of Typhoid Mary on TV at age six. He sat there, an inch from the screen, watching a freckled woman chop potatoes and sweep the floor as people dropped dead all around her, and he thought _Shit. You can kill people by accident._ That’s how it all started.

Or at least, that’s what he’s told his therapists.

Sometimes, Eddie pictures himself as Typhoid Mary. He’ll be walking down the street, or sitting in a restaurant, or spinning in his office chair, and he’ll imagine the germs spewing out of him, like a rolling green fog. They spread, crawling over his boss’s hand, or hitting the pierced, purple-haired teenager who makes his morning coffee. Then, their deaths play out in his head. He sees their hollowed out cheeks, and their mouths lined with vomit.

So when he’s sick, he prefers to stay home.

“Where are you, Spaghetti Man?” Richie asks, slamming the front door open and dropping something on the kitchen floor that sounds like a bag of delicate, easily bruised fruit.

Eddie groans. His head is entombed in a pillow, but Richie’s hearing compensates for his sight, so he says “Ah, I gotcha,” and heads straight for the bedroom.

“Stay away from me,” Eddie says, pulling the blanket over his head.

This is what always happens. Eddie gets sick, despite his rigid hand-washing procedures and extensive sanitizer collection, and he brings that illness home. And Richie, because he’s _Richie_ , refuses to stop drinking from Eddie’s cup and finishing his breakfast and kissing him awake in the mornings. Then a week later Richie will be sneezing and coughing and clutching his stomach, whining that he’s caught the plague and is about to die.

“No,” Richie says. The door flies open, and there he stands, in his winter coat and scarf, cheeks pink and hair still mushed from the hat he abandoned somewhere in the hallway.

“I’m disgusting, seriously.”

“You’re gorgeous,” Richie says, leaping onto the bed and shaking Eddie’s poor throbbing head, “Now, give me that snot.”

“No, gross!” Eddie says, but Richie’s already pinned him down and started pressing kisses to his red nose, his grimy cheeks, his dry eyes. “Gross, yuck, you are such a psycho.”

“I’m going to suck the boogers out of you like moms do with babies.”

“I will throw up on you.”

But Eddie can’t fight the grin growing on his face. He wonders if this is how Typhoid Mary felt.

“You want soup?” Richie asks, as he rolls off the bed. Some part of Eddie wants to yell at Richie to jump right in the shower and wash off the germs, but the sick part of him wants Richie’s big warm body pressed against his poor feverish one. “I bought every kind in the store. I got your chicken noodle, lentil, tomato.”

“Lentil,” Eddie says, even though the thought of lentils makes his stomach turn.

“Okay, chicken noodle,” Richie says. Eddie drags himself out of bed and starts cleaning, shoving a million used tissues into the garbage and wishing that his limbs were strong enough to lift a bottle of Lysol. “I got you the kind with alphabet noodles. So you can finally learn how to read.”

“Leave it by the door.”

“I’m already sick, babe. I was coughing the whole bus ride home.”

“You were not.”

“I swear on your mother’s grave.”

Eddie sighs and scooches over on the bed. Richie’s side is mostly free of dirty Kleenex, at least, and if Eddie wraps the blanket around himself, the only things on the bed Richie can touch are his clean pillowcase and the part of the bedsheet that Eddie hasn’t sneezed on as much.

Richie comes back in, holding an overflowing soup bowl with the tips of his fingers, and kicks the door closed. He knocks everything on the bedside table to the floor and drops the bowl.

“That’s hot as fuck,” he says, pointing at the soup, “Want me to get an ice cube for you?”

“It’s okay.”

Richie climbs onto the mattress and holds open his arms.

“Come here,” he says, and Eddie glowers at him from under the comforter.

“No.”

So Richie grabs a couple handfuls of the blanket and hauls Eddie across the bed. Eddie, weakened as he is by illness, can do nothing more than let himself be dragged into Richie’s strong embrace.

“It’s too late for me anyway,” Richie says, as he fits his chin against Eddie’s head, “You were drooling on me last night.”

“I was not.”

“A lake of drool, right on my chest.”

The last time Eddie checked, Richie was the drooler in the relationship, but his throat hurts too much for debate right now. And even though Richie is probably dooming himself, his chest is warm and his heartbeat hums against Eddie’s ear, steady and soothing.

No one took care of Eddie like this, before Richie. Sure, his mom coddled him, but she tended to take him to the hospital at the first sign of illness. His memories of being sick as a child mainly involve stiff hospital blankets, the smell of rubbing alcohol, the sound of other kids hacking and wheezing and crying a few rooms away.

“If you die, you can’t blame me,” Eddie says, and feels Richie’s laugh vibrate along his shoulder blades.

“Okay, I won’t haunt you.”

“I mean it.”

Even as he says the words, he imagines himself next to Richie’s open grave. The extended Toziers are there, glaring at Eddie. _If only this motherfucker hadn’t drooled on our boy,_ they’d say, _he’d still be alive today._

“Don’t worry, Ed,” Richie says, “I come from a line of long-lived motherfuckers. Both my grandparents died at 130.”

“Did they?”

“Alright, 100. Toziers always make it at least a century, as long as they don’t smoke.”

“You smoke.”

“Not _anymore,_ ” Richie says, which is true. He’d quit around the time they first started dating. Eddie hadn’t even needed to recite any lung cancer statistics. “Either way, it’s not your fault if I die. I’m the master of my fate.”

Eddie wants to argue more but he can feel his lungs start to crackle. He buries his cough in the comforter and keeps his head there as the coughs keep coming, one after another, wave-like.

“Eds?” Richie says, but Eddie can barely hear him. There’s something in his chest, pushing the air out.

He sees water. He tastes mud. The light turns blue and gray and black.

“Eddie?”

He is dying. The river pours into his mouth.

_“Eddie?”_

Eddie’s lungs fill with air. Richie grabs his face with both hands and Eddie remembers everything now. Myra, Pennywise, his real life, his fake life. His death. Why does he remember his death? When did he die?

“Are you okay? Do you need some water?” Richie’s trembling, so Eddie shakes his head.

“I’m okay. No water.”

“Should we take you to an actual doctor?”

“No, I’m fine,” Eddie says, and falls back against Richie’s chest. “Don’t worry.”

Richie doesn’t say anything else, just kisses Eddie’s hair over and over.

“It’s not your fault either,” Eddie says, and he’s not sure where the words are coming from. Which memory, which life. But they’re clear in front of him, like the writing at the bottom of an empty swimming pool. Five feet, six feet, seven.

“What isn’t my fault?”

“If I die,” Eddie meets Richie’s gaze. His eyes are blue and smooth, like sea glass, “It’s not your fault. Okay?”

* * *

“Stay away from me.”

They’re on the fucking Kissing Bridge again and Richie swears that he’s going to burn this thing down. Real or not real, dream or no dream, he’s going to find some matches and light it up.

“Rich?” Eddie says, and his body is a bright point in the dark night. He’s distant and small, like a dead star. He’s wearing some fluorescent coat he would never wear (or would he? Could he? Did he?) and he looks too young, like he’s barely out of high school, or college maybe. Behind them there’s shouting and _goddamn_ carnival music and Richie knows how this is going to end. He knows how it ended for Adrian Mellon. He read the article. Murder at the Kissing Bridge. He won’t let it happen to Eddie.

“Go home, Eddie, alright?”

But Eddie sticks out his chin and puts his fists on his hips. His eyes are watery and Richie convinces himself that that’s okay. Better crying than dead. Better pissed off than beaten bloody.

“What’s happening, Rich? What’s wrong?”

“Please,” Richie says, voice cracking. Maybe _he’s_ crying now. That’s okay too.

Are those footsteps behind him? The crunch of gravel? For some reason, Richie can’t turn around.

“Come here.”

“Don’t touch me.”

Eddie pulls back and tucks his hands under his arms. There’s a stubborn little line between his eyebrows, but he doesn’t say anything, just squints at Richie. The only noise is the river churning beneath them. No more footsteps.

“You can talk to me,” Eddie says, and the words don’t sound right in his sharp, clipped voice. He’s good at riling people up, not so much at consoling. “About anything. Even something I don’t want to hear. I love you.”

Richie’s breath catches.

* * *

His mom always wakes up first. She usually lets him sleep for an hour before she comes in, tapping at the door with her long nails. The sound seeps into Eddie’s brain before it wakes him and turns stress dreams about school into nightmares about cat bites, alligators slithering out of the toilet, Komodo dragons and their bacteria-ridden mouths.

Today, when he wakes up, she’s not in the doorway. She’s not in her room or in front of the medicine cabinet, pouring pills into a paper cup. He finds her at the kitchen table, reading the paper, scrambled eggs gone cold and greasy on her plate.

“Mom?”

“How could you do this to me, Eddie?” she says, voice low. Her cheeks are blotchy, and the red around her eyes makes him think of an infected wound.

“What, Mama?”

Then, he sees the newspaper. That’s his face on the front page, although it’s barely recognizable. It’s swollen out of shape, hidden behind purple bruises and gray skin.

“You’re sick,” his mother says, and he feels fluid in his lungs.

* * *

Richie slams into the cement, and feels a warm bloom of blood on his palms. The scrape sucks the pain from the rest of his injuries, briefly, and gives him enough strength to forget about his cracked ribs and his twisted ankle. Then, he’s back on his feet and running.

Behind him, Eddie is being murdered.

Somehow, he knows this even though it hasn’t happened yet. And somehow, he knows that it’s already happened. To Eddie and to Adrian, a hundred times each.

Some robotic part of Richie is putting the facts together as he sprints through Derry’s empty streets (and there’s got to be somebody awake, there has to be somebody listening, somebody will show up and _help them_ , any second now.)

Mike had the newspaper article on a desk in the library. Sometime before the ritual, Richie read the whole thing, even though he knew each horrible detail would get stuck in his head forever, like a burr on cloth.

Adrian Mellon and his boyfriend, walking home after the Canal Days Festival. Adrian, beaten beyond recognition. Adrian, drowned.

And it’s happening again. It’s happening this second. It’s happening to _Eddie_.

How did they get here? How does Richie stop it?

There’s a thud behind him, the sick sound of flesh hitting metal, and Richie turns. He knows what he’s about to see but the image in front of his eyes still feels new.

Eddie slides over the railing, and then there’s nothing but hovering, empty silence.

* * *

_Drowning_ , Eddie thinks, _isn’t so bad._ Sure, his body’s fighting it. His arms and legs push against the current, and his mouth tries to stay above the surface, even as water rushes in through his teeth.

But his mind is calm. Death’s got its hooks in him now. He’s spent his whole life running from it, but that was stupid. Arrogant and prideful. It has to end like this. It ends like this for everybody.

Eddie’s limbs go numb and his body sinks, slow.

* * *

Richie’s got his hands up Eddie’s shirt, roving over smooth, warm skin, fingers drawing lines along his spine. His eyes are closed, but he can feel the hot press of Eddie’s breath on his mouth.

There’s something not right about this scenario, but it takes a long time for Richie to figure it out. He’s too busy pulling Eddie close, slotting their legs together, and dragging his fingernails up his back.

Then, Richie remembers.

“Shit!” He pulls his hands out of Eddie’s clothes so fast he knocks him off the couch. His ass hits the shag carpet, hard.

“Fuck!”

“Sorry!”

Eddie’s hair is sticking up all over the place, and his stupid pink polo shirt is rucked up over his stomach. He looks freaked, dark eyes wild and skin turning red from his forehead to his collar.

“Where is your shirt!” he shrieks, so high-pitched Richie’s ears ring.

Richie looks down at his bare chest, covered in goosebumps. He scrambles off the couch and crosses his arms, not that it’ll do much. Eddie’s already seen everything, or at least the dream version of him has. And that’s unfair, that’s an affront to his modesty, he’s going to take this up with Mike the moment they wake up, if they ever do. Mike never mentioned that the Ritual would _strip_ them.

“Uh,” Richie says.

“You gotta find it before my mom comes downstairs,” Eddie says, and Richie finally recognizes where they are. He’d thought the wood paneling and flowery couch looked familiar, but he’d never spent much time in Eddie’s basement. His mom had been convinced that if they were out of earshot for longer than ten minutes they’d turn Eddie into a drug addict. As if any of them were ever cool enough to get a hold of drugs.

“Chill, she’s not even your real mom,” Richie says. At that, Eddie looks a little nauseous.

“She’s real enough,” he says, “Can you please get dressed?”

“You’re the one who took my shirt off! Where’d you put it?”

Before he can answer, Richie spots a flash of teal under the leg of the couch.

“Oh nice,” he says, tugging out the shirt and slipping it on. It’s a truly hideous button down covered in tropical fish, and he lost the real one twenty years ago. “And what’s your mom going to do? Ground you? You’d just skip to the next dream.”

“Yeah, the next dream where I’m dying horribly,” Eddie tugs a hand through his hair. “What’s with that anyway? Whose fear is that?”

 _Mine,_ Richie thinks. So far, it seems like the ritual’s targeted Richie exclusively. Nothing but hate crimes, dead boyfriends, decades of loving, blissful gay marriage. Maybe when they’re done with this they’ll start over with Eddie’s fears. Richie can’t wait to get stabbed to death with dirty needles.

“Is that how we get out of this thing?” Eddie asks. “I let myself die?”

“No,” Richie says, too loud, and Eddie’s head snaps towards him. “I mean, we don’t know how this works. What if you die for real?”

“Maybe that’s what has to happen,” Eddie says. “We sacrifice ourselves to kill It.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Richie can’t help the real panic that’s rising in his voice. What the fuck is wrong with this guy? He knows more about illnesses than any doctor Richie’s ever met, and he’s constantly sucking on an inhaler that doesn’t even _work_. Hell, a day ago he was ready to skip town to escape the child-eating sewer monster, but now, _now_ he’s talking about his death, his horrible death, his violent, bloody, gruesome death, like it’s the final boss in a video game. “The point of Chüd is to stay alive.”

“I don’t want to die, Rich, but how else do we get out of this thing? It’s probably not even real.”

“It _feels_ real,” Richie bites out, because he can remember it. Eddie’s funeral at the dusty church. The night Eddie died, the sound of his blood hitting pavement. And running, looking for help, screaming up at dark windows as a sinkhole of despair, panic, hopelessness, split open wide and black in his chest.

“What am I supposed to do?” Eddie asks, fear finally seeping into his voice. “I’ve spent the past two days watching you guys almost die because I’m too chickenshit to help you!”

“That doesn’t mean you have to-“

“Come on, Richie. We’re supposed to face our fears and this? This is the big one. So I die-“

“I am not going to let you die!”

Eddie doesn’t respond to that, just stares at Richie, mouth open. There’s a creak at the top of the stairs, and Richie finishes buttoning his shirt. Eddie doesn’t move as Richie fishes his sneakers out from under the couch and pulls them on.

“It’s not your fault,” Eddie says, hesitant, like he’s reciting a script.

“You told me that already,” Richie says, “It doesn’t help.”

* * *

The street’s been swallowed by a thick layer of snow. It can’t be more than a foot, but it has devoured everything, enveloping cars and mailboxes until all that Eddie can see is dull white ground bleeding into dull white sky. It doesn’t snow like this in New York. He’d forgotten that this type of weather makes his skin feel tight and itchy. He’s got this nagging, irrational feeling that it’ll never stop snowing and he’ll be stuck inside forever, beating at a door that’s frozen shut.

His mother hated winter. The moment the first snowflake hit their front yard, she’d start listing off statistics. The probability of death from falling icicle, from slipping on dark ice, or from driving on snowy roads. She talked about frostbite so much Eddie had recurring dreams about his fingers turning black and falling off one by one. He still remembers the sound they made, the wet snap.

After he moved out of his mom’s house, sometimes he’d go out in bad weather without his jacket. Not often, and he never stayed out for long. The discomfort of the cold was always stronger than his need for rebellion. But he’d still do it, once in a while, even as the years passed. He’d let the snow hit him, fat flakes or small, dandruffy flurries, and he’d watch his skin, waiting for it to go waxy and dark.

Now, it’s warm in the apartment. A bit too warm, but that’s typical. When he and Richie first moved in together, they used to fight over the thermostat.

“It’s only fifty out,” Eddie would say.

“God, you are such a northerner,” Richie would reply, “Fifty is cold in most of the world, babe.”

To prove his point, sometimes he’d put on his winter hat, a lumpy orange thing his grandmother made, and every couple seconds, he’d pretend to shiver.

Eventually, Eddie gave up because, in all honesty, he never liked denying Richie anything. Which is why he’s currently allowing Richie (who, for all appearances, is hale and hearty) to take up most of the bed. Eddie’s head is pillowed on Richie’s chest, but he’s curled up, while Richie’s long legs seem to be everywhere. He’s also reading a Buzzfeed article, and each time Eddie drifts off, Richie’s laughter wakes him up again. Every few minutes he’ll dislodge Eddie to show him a picture. (“You gotta look at this baby panda, Eds. It’s so wrinkly.”)

It’s not the most restful experience Eddie’s ever had, but he can’t remember the last time he was sick and felt so _calm_. Once, when he had the flu, Myra woke him up from a three-day sleep, weeping, because their local pharmacy was out of the good cough medicine and this, surely, would be the final nail in Eddie’s coffin. As soon as he was well, Eddie realized she’d been irrational, but in that moment, half-asleep and feverish, he’d wanted to cry too.

Richie hums something against Eddie’s hair. It’s a bubbly pop song that Eddie doesn’t know the name of, even though it’s been stuck in his head for days. Not the radio version but one in Richie’s voice, loud and off-key. Whenever it comes on the radio, Richie will turn to him, face solemn, and say, “I wrote this for you, babe.” Some long buried, deeply twisted part of Eddie always finds that sweet.

And it must be even more twisted, more hideous and horrible, that Eddie still thinks it’s sweet even though he knows it isn’t true. None of this is, and yet he’s here, cuddled against Richie’s side like he’s supposed to be there, like he’s allowed. And there’s a panicked thought, hovering at the back of his mind, but he won’t let himself think it.

The day he married Myra, she looked so happy. And she was gorgeous too, in a lacy white dress with some kind of shimmery makeup smeared around her eyes. He could acknowledge that she was beautiful, distantly, like a famous painting he didn’t understand. But he didn’t know why he couldn’t match the happiness he saw in her. All he could feel was the tight press of his lungs against his ribs.

It’s fucking twisted that all the happiness he should have felt _then_ is raging through him now. He’s so damn content he wants to scream. Kick the wall or crash his car.

 _Could I have had this?_ he thinks, as Richie runs a warm hand up and down his back, _Did I throw my whole goddamn life away?_

Between one blink and the next, the scene changes. Normally, it takes Eddie a second to figure out where he is, but this time, he knows immediately. His body is small and cold, wrapped in a stiff blanket. He smells bleach and hears the steady beat of a heart monitor. And next to him, that’s his mother’s breathing.

“Eddie,” she sobs, thick and nasally. “How could you do this?”

His eyes are gummy as he opens them. He doesn’t look at his mother but her shadow hovers over him, heavy.

“You’re sick,” she says, “And you made the other boys sick. You touched them. Now they’re just like you.”

Fat tears roll down his cheeks. He wants to tell her she’s wrong, but he can’t open his mouth.

“Look what you did, Eddie,” his mother says. He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head. “You need to look.”

He feels his head turning, painfully, like some god above is grabbing his skull and twisting. There’s a boy in the bed next to him. Skeletally thin with moldy white skin. He’s alive, barely. Every so often, he’ll suck in a labored breath.

It’s Richie.

* * *

A second ago, Eddie was asleep, but now he’s flying off the bed, eyes wild. He presses his body against the wall, nails digging into the paint, like a zoo animal scratching at a cage.

“Eddie?” Richie says. His thoughts are still slow, sticky with sleep, but his heart is beating fast. The frightened look on Eddie’s face is setting off every protective instinct he’s got. Whatever’s wrong, he’ll fix it. He’ll make it right.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie sobs, “I’m so fucking sorry, Richie.”

“You didn’t do anything, baby,” Richie says. Is this a panic attack? A night terror? Muscle memory kicks in and he reaches for Eddie, but that only makes it worse. Eddie starts breathing hard, pressing himself further against the wall.

“No, don’t touch me, please,” Eddie says and something like déjà vu stirs in Richie’s mind. “It’s all my fucking fault.”

“Tell me what’s wrong,” Richie makes his voice low, soothing, but tears start leaking out of Eddie’s eyes. His next words are wet and garbled.

“I trapped you here. I made you love me, I made you marry me. I forced you to take care of me and hold me and I’m sick, Rich, I’m so sorry.”

For a second, Richie can’t respond. His thoughts are going faster than he can follow, but something’s coming together. _I made you love me_. It’s strange, hearing those words coming out of Eddie’s mouth. Richie’s darkest, dirtiest, most twisted fear, and Eddie feels it too.

Does that mean what Richie thinks it means? He’s spent this whole fucking Ritual thinking he’s a sick perv, trapping his childhood crush into some kind of hallucinatory shotgun wedding. But Eddie’s scared too. If he’s sick, so is Eddie. And if Eddie’s not sick, then maybe Richie isn’t either.

“You didn’t trap me,” he says, sounding preternaturally calm, trance-like. Eddie shakes his head and shoves his hands in his hair, pulling at the roots until his scalp turns white. “Eddie, god damn it, listen to me. You didn’t trap me. Why do you think it’s the two of us, huh? Why did Chüd pick _us_?”

He pulls at Eddie’s wrists and doesn’t stop until Eddie looks at him. His eyes are big and scared, but there’s a bit of that energy that’s always been there, ever since he was small. A bit of fire, a kick, something that keeps him bossy and loud even when he’s scared out of his mind.

“You think it’s all about you, huh?” Richie says, and Eddie’s eyebrows furrow, “You think you dragged me into this? Well, I dragged _you_.”

A beat, and then the wrinkles disappear from Eddie’s forehead. His mouth drops open.

“Richie,” he says. Then, his face changes. He looks pissed now. God, Richie loves it when Eddie’s pissed. “You better not be fucking lying to me.”

“Lying?”

“If you are making this up to get me to calm down, or to get out of the Ritual, or whatever the fuck, I swear to _God_ , I will-”

* * *

“-kick your ass, Richie Tozier.”

Before Eddie can finish, the walls blacken and melt away. For a second, there’s only darkness, but then pinpricks of light push their way through. Stars, street lamps, flashing carnival games. Somewhere, far far away, a little kid is laughing with his whole body.

Derry, Maine. The Kissing Bridge. The last time Eddie was here, he died.

For some reason, the thought doesn’t phase him. He’s got so many memories of this damn place, good and bad, stacked up in his head like dusty boxes in an attic. He was killed here, and Henry Bowers almost broke his nose here, and once a kid in his grade brained himself on the railing and bled so much that Eddie threw up. The bad memories can’t push out the good. Not right now, not here. Not after all the shit he’s been through.

But Richie’s face has gone pale, and his mouth hangs open so wide Eddie could count his cavities. Richie’s hands tighten around Eddie’s wrists, not quite painful, and then drop away.

“Rich?” _Now_ Eddie’s upset. Some nauseating mix of rage and shame burns in his stomach. A second ago Richie was making some grand romantic declaration, and now he won’t even look at Eddie. Was that part of the Ritual too? Is that the purpose? It offers up a version of Richie that cares about Eddie and then swaps him out for the genuine article the moment Eddie’s humiliated himself.

“Get away from me,” Richie says, and god damn it, Eddie’s crying again. He’s cried more in the last fake hour than he ever did in thousands of real ones.

“You are such an asshole,” Eddie says. That gets Richie looking at him.

“ _Eddie_ ,” Richie says, “That’s not what I meant. You have to-”

“No!” Eddie says, “Don’t try and make it better! Just tell me the truth! Tell me you hate me, or tell me I’m a disgusting piece of shit. I can handle it. But don’t fucking tell me you have _feelings_ for me when you can’t even _touch_ me.”

Richie’s hands twitch at his sides, and fuck, now he’s crying too. Eddie’s such a fuck-up he made Richie Tozier cry, Richie Tozier who laughs when he’s scared, laughs when he’s sad, laughs when he’s pissed off. Now, he looks like Eddie just socked him in the stomach.

“I can’t, Eddie,” Richie says, and Eddie scrubs at his eyes.

“Yeah. Yeah, I get it.”

He crosses his arms tight across his chest. His jacket is flimsy, and the wind bites through it easily. Above him, the sky rumbles, and the first raindrops smack against his shoulders and the back of his neck.

“You _don’t_ get it, Eddie,” Richie says. His voice is low, for what must be the first time in his life.

“Okay, then enlighten me, dickhead,” Eddie snaps, and suddenly Richie’s shoving into his space. His hands clench around the front of Eddie’s jacket and it’s so hot and stupid Eddie wants to kiss him and kick him in the shins.

“Because you’re going to fucking _die_ , Eddie. You’re going to die _here_ and I’m going to watch it happen. It’s already happened and it’s going to _keep_ happening. You’re going to die because I love you, because I couldn’t keep my fucking hands to myself. You’re going to die because of _me_.”

Then there’s nothing but Richie’s warm breath on Eddie’s skin, and the press of his knuckles on Eddie’s chest. Glimmering droplets coat his glasses and Eddie wants to knock them off his face. Maybe snap them under his sodden heel. Anything to get a better look.

“You are such a pussy,” Eddie spits, “You think you love me? Prove it.”

A raindrop slithers from Richie’s cheekbone to his mouth. He licks it off his lip, and Eddie watches, transfixed.

“You’ll die.”

“You think I give a shit? I’ve done it before.”

“Baby, please-”

“I don’t care,” Eddie says, fisting a hand around Richie’s shirt and pulling. Richie moves forward easily, fluidly, like he’s been waiting his whole life for Eddie to show him where to go. “I’ve spent years trying to stay alive and guess what? It didn’t work. I’m doomed, who gives a shit. But you better kiss me, Richie Tozier, or I’m going to tell everyone in heaven that you’re a fucking chicken.”

Richie huffs out a laugh and drops his forehead against Eddie’s.

“Oh, what was that, Marilyn Monroe? Oh don’t bother with Richie, he’s such a candy-ass. Yeah, Abraham Lincoln, Richie’s a fucking-”

But Richie’s tucking his big hands against Eddie’s face. Finally, Eddie can see his eyes, crinkled and blue and happy, shining in the dark night. He presses his body against Eddie’s, cold skin to cold skin, and kisses him.

For a second, Eddie doesn’t know what to do. He’s never kissed someone he actually wanted to kiss before. And he’s wanted to kiss Richie Tozier for the past thirty years, consciously and unconsciously. Awake and asleep. Where the fuck is he supposed to put his hands? What does he do with his mouth? It’s like he’s fifteen again, long-limbed, pimply, stupid. Or 22, and drunk for the first time. He’s 25, he’s 40, he’s 80. Young and old, dead and undead. Richie’s loved him through it all, life after life. It’s stupid to be so scared.

Eddie stops thinking. He tugs Richie closer.

They wake up.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](https://paramountie.tumblr.com/)!


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